Nameless Kill (19 page)

But as he looked at Hannah, the way she stared back at him, he knew that if he did that he’d be proving her right.

So instead, he turned around. He turned around and marched down the dimly lit landing corridor and towards the stairs.

“That’s right,” Hannah said. “Go off and have your sulk. And sleep on the sofa tonight, if you don’t mind.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Brian muttered under his breath, his mind buzzing and arms and legs racing with adrenaline. He grabbed his black, hooded coat from the bannister of the stairs and zipped it up, ignoring how warm he felt.

Then, he took a deep breath and he lowered the handle of his front door, stepping out into the darkness.

He had somewhere to be. Somewhere to investigate.

And he was going to get his closure. This case was ending, tonight.

Chapter Thirty One

There was a chill in the spring air as Brian approached African Connection for the second time of the day. He could just about see his breath. His white Adidas training shoes that he’d dug out of the wardrobe barely made a sound on the concrete road. A chilly night in Preston.

But he felt anything but cold underneath his hooded black coat.

He got closer to African Connection. It was ridiculously dark around these Avenham side roads and streets. Ridiculously quiet too. Every once in a while, Brian thought he heard whistling, or the scuttling of feet, making him turn and look over his shoulder. But there was nothing. Nothing he could see. Nothing but pitch black.

And he was just a part of that pitch black.

He reached the pavement where African Connection was. The dusty, cobweb coated glass windows looked not dissimilar to how they looked in the day. His heart pounded and his entire body tingled as he approached the glass doors, all sorts of clothes and hats and blazers on display.

What the fuck are you doing, Brian? Go about this the official way. This is just bloody stupid.

But he found himself raising a hand and knocking on the glass door. It made a much louder sound than he expected, seeming to rattle against the concrete and the sides of the nearby terraced houses and all the way up the street. He held his breath. He could smell the deep fried food from an Italian takeaway drifting its way from town and towards his nostrils, making his stomach turn as he remembered the Chinese takeaway he’d eaten just earlier, the spices from the sauce still lingering on his tongue like a gangster to jail.

Unsurprisingly, nobody answered the door. He looked around‌—‌to his left, down towards the streetlights and towards the shouts of town, to his right, towards the foreboding, towering trees of Avenham Park. Scrote-haven at night, that place was. Attracted all sorts of vermin.

No. That was being insulting to vermin.

Brian lifted his hand again and brought it down on the metal handle of the front door, which was cold and rough. He tried to shift it, but it was stuck. Fuck. Of course it was locked. He was being an absolute idiot. What was he gaining by storming over here and investigating the place for himself? Where was it actually going to get him other than locked up in a prison cell?

He was about to walk away when he saw the movement behind the glass.

At first, Brian froze. He stayed still, hoping the movement was just a figment of his over-active imagination; a result of his clammy face, his dry throat from a lack of water‌—‌of everything.

But he saw the movement again.

No. More than movement.

He saw a light.

He turned his head slowly towards the light. When he looked, the light shifted away. Shifted towards the back of the store. Shifted towards the door that Brian had stood in just hours ago.

A cold shiver came over Brian. A feeling that he used to get when he was working night shifts on the beat, searching for some runaway druggie or schizo escapee. That lingering sense that he was being watched. That he wasn’t the one doing the searching‌—‌he was the one being searched.

He looked over his shoulder. Nobody across the street. A flickering street light. Wait‌—‌was that somebody in the bushes? No. No. Just the wind. Just the wind.

He took a deep breath of the bitter-cold air and looked back through the glass.

He saw the light again, and the door at the back of the shop slammed shut.

Brian’s arms fizzed. He knew somebody was in there. He knew somebody was in there and that somebody knew Brian was outside, too. Stag. If this was Stag‌—‌Elise Brayfeather’s likely killer‌—‌then what was stopping him from striking Brian down? What was stopping him from wrapping Brian’s head in a fluffy pink hat, shoving the chopped off antlers of a stag into his skull and tossing him down into Avenham Park?

No. That wasn’t going to happen.
Keep it cool, Brian. Keep it cool.

He gulped and he moved away from the glass. Walked to the right of the building, where there was an opening to an alleyway. It was a narrow alleyway‌—‌the sort that just about fit a bike down‌—‌and it was fronted by a padlocked, rusting gate.

Brian placed a hand on the gate and stared down into the darkness of the alleyway, which reeked of piss. Of course it was locked up. African Connection was impenetrable‌—‌wouldn’t any shop around Avenham be? But he got the sense that African Connection was locking away more than just stock.

His shoulders slumping, Brian turned away. He was about to cross the street and return to his car when he heard a car coming towards him.

He looked up the street. There was a black car heading in his direction. Its lights were on full-beam. It was slowing down.

Slowing down awfully close to African Connection…

Before he had a chance to be caught in the headlights, Brian crouched down beside his car and peeped through the windows at the car, which still had its engine on as it stopped outside African Connection. Brian could see now that it was a black BMW. Quite a shiny looking car, with a 2013 number plate.

Which posed the question: what was it doing in chavs-ville?

Brian stayed low as the doors of the car opened. He could hear music coming from inside, the bass rumbling. Two men got out. Brian couldn’t make them out properly in the darkness, especially with their car on full beam, but they looked to be dressed all in black.

Stag. Stag dressed all in black. Wayne Jenkins had made a point of it.

The two men moved around the back of the car. Brian couldn’t make out the man closest, but he got a brief glimpse of the one further away.

Dark-skinned. Black hood pulled right up over his head.

Stag. It had to be Stag. And he was hanging around African Connection. Just as Brian had suspected, he was right here at this dodgy old shop.

The man furthest away looked around the road, breath frosting from his mouth. He muttered something to the man beside him, his hand resting on the boot, but he was too far away for Brian to hear him properly.

But Brian did hear something else.

He didn’t think much of it at first. Initially, he’d just put it down to the rustling of the trees in the wind.

But no. Coming from the direction of Avenham Park, Brian could hear chains. Bells dinging. Voices.

He looked to his right, slowly moving his neck as he stayed crouched beside his car.

His stomach sank when he saw the five-strong gang of hooded youths, cigarettes in their mouths.

And they were cycling straight in his direction.

They were going to blow his cover. If the men outside African Connection noticed him here, he’d be finished. Taken off the case for even more harassment.

Please turn away,
Brian thought, frozen to the spot.
Please turn away.

But they didn’t. The gang of chavvy kids in trackie bottoms and hoodies kept on cycling in his direction.

It would be okay. Brian struggled through his tight chest for breath and scrambled for his car door. He could get inside his car, quickly. Nobody had to notice. Nobody would ever‌—‌

“Oi, what’s that creep doin’ by dat car, brav?”

Brian’s stomach sank. The rest of his body tensed up as the wheels of the bicycles got closer and closer.

There was no hiding now. They were coming his way.

And Brian figured they weren’t the sort who were going to just cycle past without paying any attention to him.

Chapter Thirty Two

Brian held his breath and waited for the gang of five hooded youths on bikes to arrive. His heart pounded. His body grew warmer and warmer beneath his thick coat like he was standing in the middle of a desert. He could taste the sweat dribbling down his cheeks and onto his top lip. The sounds of the bicycle wheels got closer, the shady eyes of the youths heading in his direction all focused on him, smoke rising from their mouths.

And just across the street, in front of African Connection, the two figures in black stood over the open boot of the jet black BMW, looking up at the sound of the oncoming kids.

The figure on the left started to lower the boot.

Fuck. These kids were going to ruin everything. The men across the road were obviously hiding something‌—‌something they didn’t want Brian or the kids on bikes or anyone to see.

“Is he jackin’ dusties?” one of the kids called.

“No-one jacks them dusties ‘cept us,” another said.

Brian’s stomach turned as he waited for the kids to arrive. Waited for them to blow his cover. Waited for the men across the road to close the boot and drive somewhere else.

“Shit, that’s‌—‌that’s the cop.”

This voice took Brian by surprise. In his head, which ached with the heat and the throbbing of his pulse, he thought the voice came from one of the men across the road, looming over the partly closed boot of the BMW.

But no. It came from one of the kids.

Brian looked to his right. He was as stiff as a statue, but he just about managed to twist his neck.

As he did, he finally got a full view of the kid hurtling towards him on his BMX.

And by the way the kid was staring back at Brian, wide-eyed, his feet slowing down on the pedals, he recognised Brian too.

It was the angry kid who’d got his bike nicked when Brian and Brad had been chasing Wayne Jenkins.

Brian saw something in this kid’s face. His mouth hung slack. The other kids shouted things, smiles on their faces, smoke rising from their mouths, but this kid stared at Brian like he’d just been caught skiving school behind the shed.

He was riding a bike. A very blue, shiny, new-looking bike.

A bike he couldn’t have afforded. No way.

“Let’s get the fucker‌—‌”

“Keep goin’,” the once-angry kid said. He moved his eyes away from Brian and drifted out into the road.

The faces of a couple of the other kids dropped as the smoky smell around them drifted over Brian. “What you mean, bruv?”

“We keep goin’,” the angry kid said. He pulled out into the road and kept his gaze away from Brian, pretending he hadn’t noticed him.

Brian held his breath. Held his breath and kept completely still as the other kids looked from him to the road, confused.

Please listen to your chavvy mate. Please, please listen to your chavvy mate.

A remarkable thing happened as Brian crouched there, his knees aching, his heart pounding, the lingering taste of the Chinese takeaway making him want to hurl more and more by the second.

The kids cycled past. Past Brian, past his car, past African Connection.

Brian waited there, crouched down, for a few more seconds. He listened to the noises around him. Nothing but the trees rustling in the breeze around Avenham Park. A slight mumble of voices across the road.

The kids had ignored him.

Thank fuck Angry Kid had stolen a new bike after all. What a godsend.

The mumbling of voices across the road. Brian’s throat tightened.

African Connection. The men. Stag.

He lifted himself up slightly, peeking across the road at the car, trying not to make any sharp or sudden movements.

The two men dressed in black were still there. They looked over their shoulders down the street towards town where the kids had cycled off.

And then, they turned back, and they started to lift the boot open again.

Brian held his breath. In fact, he realised he must’ve been holding his breath for a while because he was growing dizzy, his vision blurry, his chest tight. He watched the men across the road as they leaned into the boot, whispering inaudible words to one another. He watched as one of them reached inside.

And then, he watched as…

Wait…

Was that‌—‌was that what he thought it was?

The man on the left lifted himself back from the boot with a large object in his arms. It was wrapped in a white blanket. Whatever was inside it must’ve been heavy because the man’s black-trousered legs were shaking.

Body
heavy.

The other man beside him looked around. Looked around and raised his voice, jabbing the man holding the heavy, blanketed object in his side.

And then, the pair of them, led by the man without the object, headed towards the front door of African Connection and rattled on the glass window.

The man carrying the weight followed closely behind, but he looked like a deer walking for the first time. Bambi, or whatever that video was Davey used to watch as a kid. The carrier got to the door and nudged the man beside him in the arm, causing him to flinch and curse again, his raised whisper echoing across the street.

After a few seconds wait, Brian heard a click.

It was a loud click, right from by the door of African Connection.

The two men waited a few more moments, but it felt like forever for Brian, his knees aching even more, the smell of his own sweat strengthening in his nostrils. What was the click? Was somebody coming? Had the door…

And then Brian saw it. The click hadn’t come from the front door, but from the rusty gate to the right.

The two men saw it too. They saw the gate drifting open, scraping against the ground. They looked at one another, muttered a few more inaudible words, then staggered over towards this partly open gate.